by K. Ancrum
Jack snorted and looked back up to check on August, only to see the thing that wore August’s face standing across the clearing, watching him.
This August’s face was bare, and his eyes dark and curious. The blood on his chest had dried brown and gritty, and he was standing more still than Jack had ever seen his August stand in his whole life.
Jack got up and dusted off his jeans. He strode across the grass until he was standing directly across from him. He hadn’t seen his August’s eyes in a month. The mask this world forced over his August’s face didn’t allow for that, so he drank in the sight of his friend’s face greedily. The other August stared back.
Jack took a chance and stepped even closer. Then, slowly, he dropped to his knees and dug his ragged fingers into the earth. He pulled mounds and mounds from the ground, feeling around. Then he jerked something up—a thin metal circlet woven round with roots. He brushed the soil free.
The other August bowed his head and, with shaking hands, lifted the crown up. Jack took it and placed the circle on his head. He didn’t know what else to do.
The other August caught his hand as it fell to his side and brushed his lips over Jack’s ring finger, but Jack snatched his hand back. His heart jackhammered in his chest. It didn’t feel right to know the feeling of August’s mouth without permission. Illusion or not.
The other August seemed amused at Jack’s reticence. But he bowed his head again, respectfully, as if he understood.
A crow caw rang out behind them, startling Jack out of the stillness of the moment and he turned around to check on his car.
When he looked back, his own August smiling at him nervously through that stupid fucking mask that this world didn’t let him look at August without.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” August asked, shrugging a shoulder uncomfortably. Jack quickly changed his face from whatever August was reacting to. He had to get used to them switching before August asked any more questions.
“Come with me,” he said, instead, as he walked past the edge of the clearing and into the woods. He led August through the woods toward the river. August pushed branches away from their faces, guiding Jack around roots in the underbrush until Jack just grabbed his hand and let him lead.
When they reached the river’s edge, Jack could barely hear it running over the rocks. It still looked like more woods to him, but he kept walking forward anyway. His feet splashed, ankles being overtaken by current as he sunk into soil. August pulled at his arm and started yelling, but Jack held fast. Eventually, like always, August faltered and followed.
Jack pulled him in until the water nearly reached their chests, then rested his head in the curve of August’s neck. He was scared. He wasn’t sure what he’d just accepted, and the appearance of the other August always unnerved him.
“What … would you do for me?” he asked quietly.
His August was silent for a moment. Then he curled an arm around Jack’s shoulder and clasped the back of his neck. Jack mirrored the gesture.
They stood in there for a while that way, swaying in the current.
The silt under Jack’s feet made him nearly the same height, and it was utterly novel. He could feel August’s breath on the side of his face. The image of the other August at his feet earlier flashed behind his eyes, smoky and forbidden. His head bowed, his dark eyelashes resting against his cheek, like a smudge of ash. Jack shivered at the memory.
“What would you do for me?” he asked again.
“I don’t know. Anything, probably,” August replied. Something in Jack’s chest clenched, violent and ugly and desperate.
“Do you really mean that?” he asked through clenched teeth.
August pulled back to look at him, tilting his head just so. His eyes glittered beneath the shadow of the mask, and Jack felt small beneath their weight. He dug his fingernails into the ridges of August’s spine, but August didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even ask Jack to stop.
How long would they be standing in this space? A week? A month? Ten thousand years?
So old and so weary of each other’s tantrums and each other’s needs. August looking at him with millennium eyes as Jack fulfilled every inch of every requirement expected of him. Taking the lead when August got weak, handing it back when his own knees buckled. Hitting against each other back and forth until Newton’s cradle turned into Huygens’s pendulum and they finally moved as one.
After that thought, all at once, like a horrible cacophony of sound, the voice that lived behind his teeth whispered:
This is the love of your life.
Jack looked quickly away as shame and fear rushed up from the bottom of his feet, and crowded around his heart like a swarm of bees.
He could never tell him.
Hecouldnevertellhimhecouldnevertellhimhecouldnevertellhimhecouldnevertellhimhecouldnevertell—
“Come on,” August said gently, pulling away from him. Tearing himself out of Jack’s grip. “Let’s get out of the water. Let’s go home.”
* * *
On the day of the hunt, the people came to look upon their king. They were as changed as he—bitter and filled with contempt and fear. They did not love him. Twenty challengers stood before the court. All clad in their family’s finest arms. All hungry and thin. All without helm, save two: unclean people from the wild wood. The first wore a leather mask and helm with horns made from a beast beyond the wall. Very fearsome, broad was he.
The other wore a helmet of metal and feathers.
The competitors chatted among one another and boasted of their skills, but the man in the feathered helmet said nothing. He stared across the field at the Wicker King, silent and still. The Wicker King stared back. At the sound of trumpets, the search for the crown began.
The hunt went on for an age. The green was vast and the token small. When the first sun had fallen from the sky, ten challengers had returned empty-handed to their families. The rest circled the woods until nightfall. Just as the Wicker King felt he would perish from thirst, he saw a flash of gold. He went after it, stopping only when he realized that it was just the second sun reflecting off the feathered helm of his silent challenger. The Wicker King approached the man and circled him.
“You are from the wild wood, are you not? Remove your helmet so your king may look upon your face.”
The feathered warrior said nothing, and he did not remove his helmet. Instead, he turned and ran. The Wicker King chased after him. They raced through the brush and over the hill, past the mountain and out of the green, all the way to the country wall—far from the challenge green. The challenger was quick. He slipped through the night like a river. Every time the Wicker King’s fingers grew close enough to reach, the challenger darted just out of grasp. Then suddenly, without warning, the warrior stopped. He placed his hand out and ran it against the wall. The Wicker King strode thunderously toward him, intending to tear his helmet off and beat him ferociously. But, before he could, the feathered warrior pulled a brick out of the wall. And inside the stone sat the Wicker King’s crown. The warrior stepped back. The Wicker King reached into the space and took his crown out. Without speaking, he handed it to the feathered warrior. The Champion took the crown and bowed ever low, till the grass tickled the gold of his helm.
* * *
The Champion rode up to the country gates on a long-haired pony from the wild wood. Strange and fearsome was he. He wore leather armor, less than a poor man. And he had no sword. Just heavy gloves. The council was furious, but the Wicker King remembered how the Champion had waited to be given the crown rather than claiming it, and he quelled their ire.
The Champion steered his pony deftly with his knees, such that he veered far too close to his king to be proper. The Champion presented him with a length of black cloth. The Wicker King tied it around his arm, like he would a favor from a lady. The Champion considered the gesture curiously, then he urged his pony forward past the wall, leaving the king behind. The trees of the wild wood were dense
and many. As they passed farther and farther from the country, the wood thinned and died. And as the wild wood faded to bramble and brae, so faded the light. In the dark, day was gray as storm and night was thick like pitch. The badlands were near silent, stripped of natural animals and their noisemaking. Rivers ran with mud and sludge. The stink of sorcery clouded the air. When it got too hard to breathe without pain, the Champion took out a black cloth of his own and tied it around his mouth under his mask. He looked at the Wicker King pointedly until he did the same. After hours of riding, they came upon a patch of trees. They tied up their horses and the Wicker King settled down to rest. The Champion kept watch, sitting still and straight. The Wicker King saw his silhouette by the fire and thought of how, in that light, he looked familiar.
* * *
It had been three months. Jack waded through the underbrush to find the place where August laid his bedroll. The real world only peeked through in patches now. There was a red alarm clock on the grass and a single white wooden door that was the door to August’s bedroom, standing alone with no walls to hold it up.
Jack had brushed his teeth with a splintered stick and gritty clay from the riverbank and showered in a bathtub that was hooked up to nothing. He had dressed himself in wool and linen that felt like cotton as he pulled it over his skin. He knew it was really cotton, but his eyes were filled with lies now.
August lay close to the wall, near the window that was suspended three feet in the air. He was playing with his phone and glanced over at Jack as he lay down next to him. “Are you okay?”
Jack closed his eyes. “I’m fine. My head just hurts a bit.” No.
August reached across him and opened a drawer that Jack couldn’t see. Then he shook a pill out and handed it to him. “Aspirin. We don’t usually have it, but my mom had a good day and decided to go to the store.”
Jack took it and swallowed it dry. He didn’t want to risk the journey all the way back down to the kitchen to get water, because the stairs were a small mudslide. It just wasn’t worth it.
“How often does that happen?” Jack asked.
August scowled. “Are we going to go into this again?”
“No. No, we don’t.” Jack sighed. “I’m just … worried I guess.”
August snorted. “You? Worried about me and my mom? Right now? During all this fuckery? Yeah okay.” August rolled his eyes and turned toward the wall, pulling the covers up to his shoulders.
Jack gazed at the curve of August’s spine. He could do it. He could tell him like this. In the quiet of August’s room, in the heart of the forest with saplings bent around them like a bower.
“I know she loves you,” he said quietly. August didn’t respond. “Doesn’t … it get hard to do things yourself all the time?” Jack tried again.
August turned over quickly. “No. It doesn’t, Jack. Why are you pissing me off tonight? What is wrong with you?”
Jack swallowed. “It’s just … I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” Jack could tell August was narrowing his eyes by the tone of his voice.
“I … um … you … you should go visit her downstairs some more. She probably gets lonely but can’t say how she feels.”
Jack clenched his hands into fists, digging his own nails into his palms in punishment. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why couldn’t he just say it? Why wasn’t he brave enough to just spit it the fuck out? Now August was probably looking at him in suspicion and confusion, even if he couldn’t see his face past that stupid fucking mask. God. Why was he so weak?
August just sighed loudly. “Fine. Whatever. I’m going to humor you on this. First, I do all this stuff because I love her and I know that she loves me because we’re family and that’s what families do. Doing errands doesn’t make me tired, because I’m doing it for a reason I believe in. Second, if you’re worried about my mom so much, why don’t you go down there to sit with her? She likes you, too, and I know she wouldn’t care, because she doesn’t care about anything. Third, we already talked about this like five years ago when she first went downstairs, so you already know all this stuff. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to sleep. I need to have enough energy to wake up and live one more day in this nightmare that is our current situation. Okay? Okay. Good night, Jack.”
He turned over and pulled the covers even tighter around himself.
Jack stared up at the tree canopy above only him, miserably.
Nearly a full hour later, just before he was about to fall asleep, August started talking again. “If this was your weird way of asking if I feel like you’re a burden, you’re wrong and I would never think that. Don’t worry about it. I have things under control.”
“I know,” Jack whispered. “I know.”
* * *
When day came, the Champion was up before his king. He’d brushed down the horses and tore up some of the sweet grass. Packed it for them to eat when, perhaps, later, there would be none. The Wicker King had not heard him speak in all this time. “I would know who you are.” The Champion stared at him. “I said, I would know who you are.” The Wicker King made certain it was clear that this was a demand, not a request. The Champion came forth and fell on one knee before him, bowing his head. From this position, the Wicker King could see a sliver of white flesh between his Champion’s helm and his tunic. The most of his charge he had yet seen. Without thinking, he placed his hand there and gripped tight. The Champion bowed lower, then rose and went back to tend the horses.
It wasn’t an answer, but the Wicker King found that he was pleased. They were far still from the great river, but when they turned their faces to the sky, all was gray and all was shadows. Both suns were eclipsed by the fog and the day and time were uncertain.
The Wicker King grew weary. The journey had been long and his companion silent. The groaning and shrieking of beasts rang never endingly, but they saw none. Apprehension was a great toil. They had been marching steadily for two days when his companion stilled. After ages of peace, there emerged a great and terrible worrig. Twenty hands high, it rose from the ground. Woolen and tough of hide, blind and keen of scent. Hungry. It made a sound that would freeze your bones and jelly your stomach; then it charged with the power of ten thousand horses. But the Wicker King was brave and he unsheathed his blade. The Champion stole a life’s breath to speak.
“Does it live or die?”
The Wicker King was so stricken with fear and distracted from the hunt that he did not spare time for thought that this was the first he’d heard his companion’s voice.
“It dies. Or we do.” Without hesitation, the Champion sprang from his horse. He ran at the worrig, swift and sure, ducking beneath its belly and swinging up onto its back. As the beast snorted and roared, he crawled up its stinking hide and punched it soundly in the back of the head. He beat the creature into the ground with gloved fists until blood spewed from between its tusks, and it swayed and pitched, screaming. The Champion delivered a final blow so ferocious it split the beast’s skull, and he rode its descent to the ground. It was a terrible thing to behold, savage and true. As the Wicker King watched, something in him tore irreparably. The Champion shook the blood from his gloves and climbed back onto his horse, ready to continue the journey. But the Wicker King drew close, and without asking, tipped the helm from his Champion’s head. Beneath was wrapped tightly in scarves. As the Wicker King removed them, the Champion stared back, dark eyes defiant. When the last cloth fell, the Wicker King took in hand the face of the brother he thought he had lost.
So touched by grief was he that his hands quaked and his knees failed him. He cried out the name of his brother and wept bitterly. The Champion, the King of the Wood no longer, bent to raise him from the ground. And when tears had been dried, he spoke anew. The peoples of the wild wood are old, closer to the land than those within the kingdom. They traveled the dark lands wide and far, protected from the beasts by dark masks and the strength of their fists. They told tales of the Cloven King and his growing thirs
t for power and riches. They told of wraiths brought from beyond the gate between life and death. Warriors fused with the darkest of magic that brought with them the black fog that cloaked the skies. They told of prophecy that had called for a champion from before the time of the kingdom, and before the time of the hunt. So they’d stolen a king and remade him to save them all. He bid his brother not to weep, for their journey and victory had been told by the stars at the birth of this world and would repeat anew in a circle of life and death until the end of time.
The Wicker King listened, but he was quick of temper and still so young. He did not want to bow before prophecy. He wanted justice for the years of joy with his brother that the wild people had robbed of him. But they were too far to turn back, so they continued on—rage still caught fast in the Wicker King’s heart. As they pushed farther into the darkness, a great rushing accompanied the screams of beasts that plagued them at every hour. At length, they came upon a vast and swiftly moving river. And for the first time, the Champion showed fear. His brother had never been a strong swimmer. But, it had been years, and he felt now, more than ever, that he did not know him.
“We must cross,” the Champion said.
“Must we?” the Wicker King replied.
“The Rapturous Blue is on the other side. As is the Cloven King. We are close to his kingdom. Do you not hear the wraiths?”
The Wicker King did not.
“The horses will get is across. The Gorgon watches over us.”
“I have not known you to care about the Gorgon, brother.”
